Once in a Blue Moon
Repairs
Enver Paille, technician first class, stepped back
from the panel and started cursing. “Great, just great.”
“What
is it?”
“The pump just stopped working.” He turned away from
the red warning lights dominating the control panel and pointed
upwards to a smooth, rounded shape barely visible between the lights
on the deck's ceiling.
The other tech followed his pointing finger and
sighed. “Of course, that thing again. I swear, the nano assemblers
building this deck must have fucked up pretty badly when they made
that coolant pump.” He crossed his arms and looked at Paille
expectantly.
Enver just shrugged and turned to grab the control
reader he had left connected to the panel. While he carefully
declamped its magnetic links, he answered the unspoken question
hanging in the air. “I'll try to see if the reader can access the
internal pump controls and force it to start up again.“
“But if that doesn't help, we have to bridge the
coolant flow over to the other pumps and then open this thing up to see
what can be done.”
The other technician nodded. “Then I guess I should
prepare a pair of full-body suits.”
Paille made sure the reader was working and then
pointed it at the faulty coolant pump.
“Yes, you go and do that. I somehow doubt this
thing will suddenly start working again on its own.”
Just a typical day of life for two technicians
working on one of the oldest industrials still flying for the
Gallente Federation Navy.
Arrival
The indomitable Loriot's Revenge, an Iteron-class
industrial, was on its way to transport captured Caldari-personnel
from a skirmish at the border back to a suitable prison camp.
Technically, the ship was now part of the Nereus-class, thanks to
its new drone bay. But the crew still called it “that old Iteron”.
Besides, the navy somehow had never gotten around to actually fit the
ship with drones.
The crew didn't mind. Some of them had served for
years on this ship and were well accustomed to its many quirks.
Malfunctioning repair drones, accumulating heat damage because of
coolant pumps breaking down, and sometimes the atmospheric
scrubbers gave the air the sweet taste of mustard. All in all not
having combat drones to defend themselves didn't really rank high on
the list of things wrong with the ship.
Captain Inardo, proud non-capsuleer and stalwart
refuser of all help modern technology could have lend his ailing
body, looked around his bridge. A mess of broken equipment, slowly
breaking down equipment, and repair drones whirling around through
the air, trying to keep up with the decay. Sighing deeply, he sat
back in his command chair. Sometimes he felt a bit lonely. On the
Loriot's Revenge, most of the work, even on the bridge, was done by
drones. This was quite normal for a ship of the Federation Navy, but
on this old industrial the effect was felt particularly extreme.
Thanks to his ship getting closer and closer to being
decommissioned each day, the number of crew men assigned to it had
steadily decreased until it hit the bare minimum about a year ago.
After that moment, the ship could be lucky if it at least got
replacements for crew lost or reassigned.
Captain Inardo had pointed out on more than one
occasion how stupid it was to use a ship with a dozen crew men to
transport close to a hundred prisoners. But his superiors, all
capsuleers, had just pointed out they would have had no
problems controlling a ship like his. If they had had enough time, of
course. Or if a capsuleer-capable industrial would have been
available, of course.
So they just crammed everyone in, jettisoned the
crates of rifles he had been supposed to transport and ordered him to
take the POVs back all the way to Orvolle for questioning.
Annoyed he adjusted his chair a bit. Of course, this
left him with a bit of a mess. A lot of people, some of them also his
superiors, would be quite disappointed to hear of the fate of his
rifle-shipment.
A grating, metallic voice interrupted his meandering
thoughts.
“Exit out of warp in 15 seconds, arrival at gate to
Osmeden imminent”
“Acknowledged. Jump into the Osmeden-system as soon
as possible, please.” He got no answer, but then he didn't really
expect the boxy navigator-drone replacing an actual navigator on
his ship to give him one.
“Skipper, something is wrong here.” Indardo
flinched at hearing the unexpected voice. He did actually had one other human
left with him on the bridge. He leaned over to look at the stations
his 1O was overseeing. “What is it?”
“Our communication-drone claims it has intercepted
a scripted override protocol aiming at the gate ahead.”
“Who the hell would try to override a gate?”,
asked Captain Inardo incredulously.
His 1O, an average looking guy locked into a
dead end position in his career, like so many others on this ship, just looked
back at him.
“It's not aimed directly at the gates. Someone
tries to interfere with the gate guns.”
This didn't sound good. “Are there still naval
ships at the gate? There should be some customs officers hanging
around, at least.”
The 1O shook his head. “No, that's too expensive
nowadays. We're still in the Maut-system and the ships protecting the
system are busy elsewhere.”
In this moment the ship finally dropped out of warp.
Automatically the drones controlling the ship aligned the small
industrial to the gate connected to Osmeden and accelerated to get
into jump-range. At the same time, other drones detected the waiting
ships close to the gate and raised the alarm.
Both humans flinched at the buzzing, shrill sound of
the emergency siren suddenly blaring into their ears. The drones
remained completely oblivious.
“What the hell? 1O, cut that off! I can't hear
myself thinking”, shouted Captain Inardo to his fellow
officer.
The 1O reached over the weirdly smooth shape of the
drone connected to the communication-station and into a hole where something had dissolved the metal plating.
With shocking abruptness the painfully loud siren was
gone. “What did you do?”
His first officer shrugged. “I ripped the intercom
main router out of his casing. It's rather easy to replace, after
all.”
The captain sighed. “We have to look up the
AI-routines responsible for the siren. I'm fairly sure it's not
supposed to be loud enough to drown out everything.”
“So now what, why the sirens?” His 1O looked at
the sensor station. “Pirate ships, waiting at the gate. Looks like
the signal we intercepted was them trying to neutralize the gate
guns.”
“I guess in a few seconds we see if they were
successful.”, said Inardo cheerfully.
“Ten seconds to gate jump.”, grated the
navigator-drone.
On the sensor screen, the ships were identified as
belonging to the Serpentis Corporation. A strike force comparable to
the one they just left, down to the ship types involved. Three sleek,
smooth Vigilante-class cruisers and a couple of small frigates hang
around, slowly orbiting the gate. For an ignorant observer it looked
like someone had just taken a couple naval frigates and cruisers and
painted them black.
Suddenly the small force changed to an
intercept-course and accelerated like mad. The frigates rushed
forward, leaving the slower cruisers behind.
The navigator-drone and the drone controlling the
sensors spoke at the same time, blithely obliterating useful
information into an incomprehensible, slightly metallic sounding
mess.
“Five” “Warning:” “seconds” “Foreign”
“to gate” “targeting impulses” “jump.” “detected.”
The 1O and the captain looked at each other. “I
don't think we'll go through that gate, skipper.” The captain
nodded solemnly.
They didn't jump through the gate.
Four frigates targeted them with multiple warp
scramblers, disruptors and stasis webifiers. The warp scramblers and
-disruptors made it impossible for the small industrial to warp away
and the stasis webifiers slowed their sublight-speed down to a crawl.
Less then a thousand metres before they could have been close enough
to the gate for a jump, the Vigilante-cruisers arrived and added
even more webs to the net holding them. The ship practically came to
a stop, immobilized by the electronic weapons targeting its warp core
and engines.
The Loriot's Revenge was left completely helpless.
Blaze
Far away from the bridge, Enver Paille and his helper
were still fighting with the faulty coolant pump. The blaring siren
surprised right during the process of checking each others' suits for
faults. “What the hell is going wrong now?” Paille was
furious. The entire ship had just twelve people on it and chances
were, whatever just went wrong, he and his pal would have to deal
with this.
“I have no idea. We're just a couple of jumps from
Orvolle, it can't be a pirate attack or some nonsens like that.”
“Jack, try to reach the bridge, I'll make sure the
coolant isn't still pumping through this broken piece of shit.”
The other technician nodded and turned to the next internal
com-panel. Enver winced silently. He had completely forgotten most
people on this forsaken ship had no implants or other upgrades to
interface with the machinery. They had to do everything by hand.
He turned to the pump over his head and made sure his
suit was connected to both internal and external interfaces, then he
slowly overrode the small pump-AI and closed the valves leading
into it. “Now the thing at least won't suddenly explode
and flood the compartment with coolant.”, he mumbled to himself.
Behind him, his assistant technician looked
back over his shoulder. “Enver, communication to the bridge is
blocked. I can't reach them!”
Silently cursing, Enver Paille rerouted his
com-implant to try to get to the bridge himself. Nothing. “Looks my
fancy implants can't get through, either.”
Jack frowned and turned around. He opened his mouth
to say something. Then the world ended.
Ash
“Skipper, I don't think they believe we can't talk
to anyone on the ship.” “Well, I wouldn't believe it myself if
someone told me. But we surrendered, what do they want more?”
“I guess they think we'll try to destroy the
cargo.”
“Message incoming.”, interrupted one of the
drones. The two humans exchanged a quick look. “I hope this time
they accept our surrender.”, said the 1O.
“Luther, I fear they will do exactly this, just
because it is the only thing I can think of which would make our day
even worse.”
The 1O smiled. “Let's hope they don't and we get
the others out of this alive.” The Captain couldn't help it and
smiled back. “Yes and let's hope the pirates will also tell us what
they want with some third-rate prison transport.”
“Maybe one of them owes them money?”, joked his
1O. This absurdity was too much, both the captain and his first
officer started cackling like mad. Maybe they already were.
Right then the commander of the Serpentis strike
force finally decided to end the stalling by the valiant Gallente
officers. He was now sure a relief force of the Federation Navy must
be close. This was the only explanation why the lowly captain of an
aging Nereus-transport would dare to talk back to him with one inane
thing after another.
This Captain Inardo actually had the gall to
tell him he couldn't reach the rest of his crew because of his
internal communication breaking down just as he dropped out of warp!
He also seemed to think the Serpentis commander would accept a
surrender while his crew was busy destroying the valuable cargo the
ship was supposed to have. The commander ordered his force to open
fire. The cargo was also supposed to be incredibly durable. Better to
fish it out of space instead of wasting more time with those federal
jackasses, he thought.
The combined fire of fifteen neutron blasters hit the
Loriot's Revenge. Shields and armor were instantly gone. Compartments
were ripped open, atmosphere vented into space. Engines exploded and
a flood of plasma rampaged through the writhing wreck. By sheer
coincidence, one of the guns happened to fire directly into the
bridge, killing the captain and his 1O instantly.
Debris
Enver Paille's head hurt.
He forced his eyes open. What happened? Everything around him seemed
half-molten and broken. Even more so then usual. He suddenly noticed
he was lying on the ground. Slowly he sat up. A spike of pain ripped
through his spine. “Jack? Where are you? I think I need help.”
No one answered. Silently
cursing, he got up himself. Very carefully. It was still painful. He
tried to remember what happened. His full-body-suit was blackened,
his telemetry told him half it's functions were dead and his oxygen
was already half depleted.
Enver tried to orient
himself. A large hole in the wall. That shouldn't be there, he
thought faintly. Behind him on the ceiling, another hole where the
pump had been. Drops of coolant were slowly moving through the air.
Wait, his suit told him the atmosphere was gone. There is no air
anymore. Well, then just call it empty space, he thought in the
silence of his own head. For some reason this seemed really funny to
him and he started to laugh.
More pain raced through
his head. He decided to stop being funny and get on with it. Enver
slowly moved through the room. First he had some trouble getting
forward, but then it finally dawned on him the magnetic links in his
boots prevented him from floating in the zero gravity and he stopped
trying to swim. He walked out of the compartment, one clunky step at
a time.
After carefully avoiding
a part in the wall where the bulkhead had just melted into the
com-panel, leaving a mess of wires and something which looked
disturbingly like swarming rogue nanites, he finally found Jack.
Jack's suit was a broken
ruin. And what was left inside, barely human. The same force which had pushed
Enver down to the ground and shoved him into the edge of the
compartment must have hit Jack with full force, sending him out
straight through the bulkhead.
Enver fought down the
sudden urge to vomit. Poor Jack. And he had been supposed to leave the
ship for retirement in a week. Why do I think of this now? I hope I
don't suffer from some brain damage.
He took some long, deep
breaths. It depleted his remaining oxygen even more, but calmed him
down somewhat and cleared his thoughts. I guess there was an attack,
multiple simultaneous equipment malfunctions seem rather unlikely.
The siren did have a reason, after all.
Think positive, he told
himself. Even with Jack dead, there were still ten other people left
with him. So he just had to go and search for survivors, then they
had to head to some remaining escape pods and get out of here. Easy.
Just hope the attackers are finished and gone, or this still could
end nasty.
After sometime, his
unwieldy steps brought him close to the ship's cargo hold. This of
course meant not much on a cargo vessel, he still was a long way from
anything important. He remembered the Caldari prisoners and
wondered if they were still alive, protected by the cryogenic
chambers they were transported in.
He decided he couldn't
just ignore them and went to look for survivors.
The first cargo
compartment he accessed told his com-implant everything was fine,
then opened into space. Cursing and thanking the gods for his
magnetic boots anchoring him to the ground, he closed the compartment
again as fast as he could. Apparently that part of the ship was just
gone. The next compartment also opened, but the cargo space inside
was a lumpy mess of molten metal. Still hot enough his suit
immediately warned him of impending danger. He hastily closed this
one, too.
Feeling a bit unreal, he
wandered through the cargo area in total silence. Nothing worked,
no-one seemed to be alive or even able to reach and use a
communication device of some sort.
A third cargo compartment
refused to open. He got his implant to connect with a still working
camera-drone inside and got a confusing picture of metallic spikes
and boiling clouds of some indefinable mass in dazzling
rainbow-colors. Enver decided this looked too much like
malfunctioning nanites and moved on.
The fourth compartment
gone like the first one. The fifth one was so broken nothing worked.
The bulkhead looked so twisted he decided to not even try getting it
open anyway. The sixth cargo compartment finally worked like normal,
even though it too had taken extensive damage. Enver opened the
access hatch and crawled in. Not for the first time he was thankful
the engineers responsible for the Nereus had at least added walkways
like this one, to enable some quick maintenance without accidentally
blocking main access to the cargo.
Enver found his way
blocked by a burst cryo-crate. Again he had to waste precious time to
avoid sharp edges. He also tried his best to avoid looking into the
destroyed cryogenic capsule inside the crate. Something told him
vomiting inside his suit would be the last thing the did before
suffocating like a moron.
Suddenly his implant send
him a warning: Unknown foreign communication detected. He wasn't
alone anymore. And whoever was close enough for his implant to pick
them up, wasn't exactly part of a federal rescue operation, it seems.
Speeding his progress up
a bit, he hastily stood up inside the main cargo area of the
compartment and tried to find a working cryo-crate. About twenty per
compartment, he thought. He saw and discarded ten immediately. They
weren't as broken as the one he had to crawl over on his way in, but
they were still clearly dead. As fast as he could he tested the nine
remaining crates.
His implant send another
warning. It was clear now someone was boarding the wreck, the signals
were far too close for the source to be outside the ship.
Another dead Caldari.
Another broken cryo-crate. Five left. Finally he got life signals!
Enver crudely marked the crates he found just in case.
Now he just had to
find the maintenance-chamber close by, drag out two suits and enough
tools and materials to restore atmosphere inside the compartment.
Then he just had to rescue the two Caldari by himself. Easy!, he
thought. Hey, maybe even some more survivors would show up to help
him?
He went to work.
Meeting
Diane Zuo had seen better
days. First the Caldari expedition she had been a part of got
mistaken for a hostile recon force scouting the border between Pure
Blind and Placid. Then she and about a couple hundred other survivors
were taken prisoner. The last thing she knew before getting stuffed
inside a cryogenic capsule was: They were supposed to be transported
to a federal navy base for a more intense interrogation as was
possible on board a warship. So she was understandably surprised when
she instead awoke to weird Gallente drones trying to get them out of
their capsules and inside of some escape pods.
Still a bit drowsy from
being roughly ripped out of cryogenic sleep, she barely noticed the
drones closing a clunky space suit around her. Then something had hit
her in the head pretty hard and she went back to sleep.
Now she was awake again.
With some additional headache, because why not? Apparently she hadn't
suffered enough already. But hey, she was free at least. Now she just
had to escape from the airless wreck the Gallente-industrial had
turned into. Easy.
After taking a good look
at the compartment she was in, she decided to head out to find some
other survivors. This room was just some kind of storage area for
maintenance work. Trying to think around the pulsating headache
plaguing her, she vaguely remembered the drones dragging people out
of the cargo area. If that had happened to her, too...
She walked the way back
she remembered. As she thought. The maintenance area was close to the
cargo-compartment she and her comrades had been stored in. But her
high spirits immediately fell down to earth again: She had no idea
how to get into the cargo-compartment. She had no idea how to access
the Gallente-interface controlling the maintenance hatch she was
standing in front of. Basically, she had no idea if there even was
anyone alive back in there.
For a moment she just
stood there, silently despairing. Finally, she decided to go on and
search for an escape pod. No use dying here too, she thought.
Just as she entered a new
passage-way, her suit suddenly piped up. According to the readings
suddenly appearing in her helmet HUD, a crew member of the Gallente
industrial was near, and slowly getting closer each step she took. She swallowed and
tried to calm down her suddenly racing thoughts. Maybe she could
convince the other survivor to work together? Now she only had to
hope the other one wasn't one of those nationalist fanatics sometimes
cropping up at the most inopportune moments.
Then she smirked. The
Gallente survivor must be thinking pretty similar thoughts right now,
considering how the history of Gallente and Caldari went.
A communication
request interrupted her dithering. Apparently the other survivor had
indeed noticed her. Silently hoping for the best possible outcome,
she accepted and with an audible click the connection between their
suits established itself.
A strained male voice
suddenly spoke into her ears.
“OK, who the hell are
you? I'm reading your suit's telemetry data right now and you are
showing up as 'unknown'. Are your one of those Serpentis-freaks? You
sure as hell do not belong to my crew.”
Diane was shocked.
Serpentis? She guessed the Serpentis Corporation must have been the
attacker, then. One riddle solved. She tried to hold her voice steady
and answered.
“No. I'm one of your
Caldari-prisoners. Your drones started thawing us out and then
stuffed us into spacesuits.”
“What?”, came the
incredulous answer.
“Well, into one space
suit.”, she corrected herself. “Everything exploded after the
drones finished closing my suit. And I was the first one.”
“OK, this is seriously
weird. Our drones were not supposed to do this. On the other hand,
I'm also sure Serpentis boarding parties won't be wearing our
full-body suits and claiming to be our prisoners of war.”
Before Diane could get a
word in edgewise, he continued.
“Just to be clear, those boarding parties are already on board and we don't have much time, so
let's speed things up a bit. I'm sending you the coordinates of the
place I'm sitting in right now. It's rather close, so please hurry up
so we can get to an escape pod and out of here.”
“And I guess those
Serpentis-guys will just let us go?”, Diane asked sarcastically
when the voice finally paused for a moment.
“Well, do we have a
choice?”
Diane shrugged. They
really didn't.
“You're right. I'll
come to you and then we go and get out. My name is Diane Zou, by the
way. “
“Enver Paille, nice to
meet you.”
Rescue
The rest was easy. More
or less. Diane carefully made her way through the wrecked ship, lead
on by her suit. Finally she arrived at another wrecked
cargo-compartment. The access-hatch worked, however. She entered and
stopped surprised. A thin layer of something was on the other side of
the hatch. An emergency air lock maybe?
“Good, you made it. Now
please wait a moment until the hatch is closed.”
Another full-body suit in
even worse condition than hers was waving at her from behind a
opened-up cryo-crate.
“What are you doing
here?”, she asked.
“Two of your comrades
are still alive. I'm trying to get them out of these things and into
spacesuits.”
She was impressed. An
egotistical Gallente willing to risk his life for some POVs? Not
something you saw often.
“Let me help you. I was
a cryo-technician on my ship.”
“You're a technician, too? Talk
about coincidences. Come on over, then.”
After the hatch closed
behind her, she carefully pressed through the thin air lock material
and went to the open crate. But just as she reached the Gallente guy,
Enver, she reminded herself, an alarm was send to her HUD. She froze
for a second.
Enver jumped up from his
work. “Shit. I guess the boarding parties finally found us. They're
on their way through the passage-way right now.”
Fighting her growing panic down,
she tried to deal with this new development. “Do you have a weapon?
Can we get those two out of here right now?”
“Only my sidearm. I
didn't find any other working weapons.”, he said, pointing to
the ion gun hanging on his side. “And no, we did what
we could. We two aren't probably going to fight off those guys on our
own.”
She bit back an angry
retort. He was right. And more, the frustration in his voice told her
he liked this no more than she did.
In this moment the hatch
behind her blew apart. The atmosphere streamed out immediately as
shrapnel pierced the thin emergency air lock and pulled them both off
their feet. They stumbled awkwardly over each other, cursing. Another
salvo fell into the room, wreaking havoc among the cryo-crates.
“How?”, whispered
Enver somewhere below her. “I think they were cloaked.”, she
whispered back.
Armored figures in black
carapaces filed into the room. Black, featureless plates scanned the
room. One of the armored figures waved his weapon to one of the few
cryo-crates still undamaged. He fired.
Another looked into the
ruins of the crate they had been standing above just moments before.
He just made a insulting gesture and straightened up again.
“I
think he is dead, too.”, Enver whispered and Diane understood. The
sudden depressurization had killed the other Caldari-prisoner. Now
she was the last survivor, like Enver Paille was the last surviving
Gallente on the ship.
One of the blank masks
swiveled to them. Suddenly, their suits started complaining about
outside interference breaking into the communication-circuits. A
stark, emotionless voice cut in.
“Just so you two
understand, for the stupid bullshit your captain pulled, we will
throw you out into space. We won't even take you scum out of your
suits. Would make the suffering not long enough for the commander.”
When the voice stopped speaking, another Serpentis-soldier had
retrieved Enver's ion gun and pressed his armored fist hard. The gun
just crumbled apart like a broken toy.
“Man, once in a blue
moon I wish I could be lucky.”, whispered Enver over the com-link.
The soldiers came closer. Enver and Diane remained silent. What was
there left to say?
Visitor
The capsuleer was
annoyed. He really had no idea why a force of Serpentis
pirates were trying to blockade his route and he really had no time
to deal with them now.
But he also was really,
really bored. When the small Serpentis fleet started targeting his
ship, he just activated his micro jump drive and waited. As he
thought, before any of the ships surprised by his sudden appearance
through the gate could get close enough to stop him with a scram, the
MJD jumped him a hundred kilometres away from the danger.
Not far enough away to
escape the fast moving frigates, but far enough away to target them
and blow them away before they could get close enough again to be a
danger.
The three Vigilante-class
cruisers followed in the wake of their smaller consorts, obviously
trying to get close enough for their short-range weapons to deal with
him. He smirked. He was experienced enough to know the weaknesses of
those Serpentis cruisers, he had a good ship and a good crew. And not
a single enemy capsuleer among the pirates. This was a slaughter, not
a fight.
For a moment, he thought
about why those pirates were so keen on sacrificing themselves to his
boredom. What was so important to them? Then again, he wasn't that
interested. He shrugged mentally and launched drones from his old
Raven battleship. Just in case some of the frigates survived his
long-range bombardment with cruise missiles. But with a target
painter leading the missiles, this wasn't really a possibility.
Gate
“Hey look at this
couple, isn't that cute?”
“Get away from that pod, you dolt! I
have to see if they're hurt”
Diane and Enver, still
encased in their blackened and bruised suits, blinked in the sudden
light shining at them.
It took the people
surrounding them almost no time at all to pry them out of their
suits and transport them to some sort of hospital ward.
“Where are we?”,
whispered Enver, after he and Diane were finally left lying on two
white beds next to each other.
One of their saviors, a
lean girl with short, black hair and concerned looking green eyes,
just looked at them and said:
“Don't worry, you're
safe now. We found you two drifting close to our gate and took you
in. You're at the Osmeden-gate in Maut. Just be glad the
emergency-beacons of your suits still worked.”
“The gate people took
us in? I guess this time we're the lucky ones”, said Diane Zou with
a tired voice.
“But what happened with
our attackers?”, asked Enver.
The girl shook her head.
“The Serpentis ships, I assume? An independent capsuleer with a
battleship turned up and killed them all.”
Enver felt Diane grabbing
his hand and he looked around to her. As their eyes met, she said: “I
guess once in a blue moon we do get lucky.”
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